I have worked as a recruitment consultant over 18 months in a reputable company in the north west specialising in contract recruitment in engineering. I was head-hunted by my manager freshly after graduated in electrical & electronics engineering degree.

At first I thought heck, I'll give this job a go and soon found that I've been consistently praised at for having done a good job. Over the last 12 months I have placed 36 highly paid contractors/ executives and so far (calculating margins and mark-ups) made the company over 65.00 GBP an hour and for the past 12 months calculated that I have achieved over 140 k for the company.

Now, I have a basic salary of 20 k and I get 3 monthly bonuses of 1500 per month (this has been increased last month from 1000 every 3 months), so that would bring my total salary to 26000 GBP per annum.

Doing the figures, I can't help but feel that I am undervalued and should be paid a lot more. However I am unsure about this as my manager never disclose how the bonuses are paid and said that I cant get my basic salary to be increased due to the current climate. (I later learnt that he is getting anywhere in between 80 k to 100k per annum).

I'd appreciate it if anyone can give their opinion or two cents on this one and enlighten me on the salary that I should be expecting working as a recruitment consultant.

P/S: I also have a REC CERT RP and has recently gone through a headhunting course, so I would certainly think that this would increase my worth to the company!

I don't know if you're still following this thread since it was posted back in April but all employment/recruitment agencies operate their remuneration differently. Often, the smaller agencies will require you to make £x margin for the company and anything above that is a % of margin commission and can be unlimited. Othertimes the commissions are payable only on certain % margins achieved, one I know of only pays commissions for margins above 12%.

One thing is for sure though, forget about how much your boss earns, whether you agree or not, he will certainly think it is none of your business.

If you are a good consultant maybe you'd be willing to sacrifice the security of working for the reputable agency and look for work in a smaller less established organization.